I needed a low profile PCI bracket for a RAID card. Each bracket is bespoke to the particular model of card. There was an official one, but nobody sold them. It's 'just a bit of stamped metal', but it's key to making the card fit reliably.
So I went off to Thingiverse, found a low profile PCI bracket design. Move the screw holes around to match my card. The template had connectors, my card didn't. A few clicks in Sketchup and I had deleted the connectors and replaced with ventilation holes. Print, job done.
It took about half an hour of design (including learning Sketchup), plus about 20 mins of printing. If I'd tried to make one out of sheet metal it would have taken a lot longer.
TL;DR: open source designs can be easily customised - you don't have to accept them as-is, nor do you have to design from scratch.
To be honest I made replacements for my own car from ally sheet. It was others who wanted a simple new ready made part to replace them. They would certainly be strong enough made from glass fibre.
Went round Mums earlier, "Ah Tim, I have a little job for you ..." ;-)
She'd picked up a Barbie electronic game thing (the looks like a laptop) for my nieces young daughter ... for 50p from a charity shop because the plastic cover was missing from the battery compartment.
Depends on the material used. PLA (Polylactic Acid) is the most commonly and most easily used plastic in 3D printers but isn't the strongest. Polycarbonate can also be used in most printers (although it makes a nasty smell and is a bit fiddly to get right) and parts printed in that are as strong as any Polycarbonate item. Nylon is also now available.
'We' had the job done professionally. But of course dunno if the best material for the job was used - it's something you'd expect the people making them to know. They weren't cheap, either.
The originals were made of the common sort of plastic you find in cars. Slightly flexible.
Assuming you can scan a small plastic part to generate a pattern file (I only know you can 3D print from such special files - not their file type), strip your electric kettle down as soon as its warranty has expired but before the fragile wishbone shaped nylon operating lever/ linkage between the on/off button/lever and the safety anti-boil dry/ automatic switch off triggered by reaching boiling temperature switch has failed so you can duplicate a couple of "improved"[1] spares when that time limited part fails so as to persuade you to buy yet another "Almost Identical" electric kettle.
Even though the original part may still be in good condition, replace it with the newly printed version and hang onto it as a spare in case your own part fails prematurely due to a bad choice of plastic feedstock being used. This will prove the suitability of the printed part or else alert you to the need for using a better feedstock or a modification of the design to beef it up further.
Hint: the built in obsolescence relies upon a non-safety critical part, leaving almost no wriggle room in their choice of "elected to fail just outside of the warranty period" component. It's tricky to get the element to fail to a reliable schedule in a non-dramatic failure event that would otherwise generate bad publicity for the manufacturer. Also, there's virtually no cost savings to be made in producing a 3 year life element versus a 10 year life one.
In any case, electing to rely upon a cheap plastic part to fail on schedule means any in warranty miscalculations can be cheaply addressed by setting up an emergency servicing centre contract to fit replacements should there be a serious miscalculation on their part. A small lightweight package of 50,000 spare levers can be run off and cheaply air- freighted from China to any such servicing agent wherever they may be in the world.
Owning your own 3D printer is your way of getting back at the manufacturers who use modern JIT computerised manufacturing techniques as a way to screw their target market out of their hard earned cash by supplying 'Cheap Goods' that fail suspiciously soon after their warranties have expired and are considered "not worth the expense of a DIY repair".
[1] You can (and are strongly advised to) improve on the original design to eliminate the built in stress concentration points such as smoothing out abrupt angular deviations required to snake past other components, for example.
You can probably use a larger cross section of plastic to compensate for any high temperature weaknesses in the plastic feedstock forced on you by the 3D printer's own limitations compared to what the manufacturer was able to get away with by using a high pressure injection moulding press so it seems a good idea to modify the part for extra strength if at all possible. After all, your time is far more precious than the extra penny's worth of plastic feedstock and electricity required to make a better part.
ABS, also available for 3D printing. Another neat trick you can do which is used a lot by model train enthusiasts is a form of lost plastic (rather than wax) casting. Make a positive from PLA and put it in casting sand as you would wax. Molten metal poured in will melt the PLA as if it was wax leaving you with a metal casting.
Good job some have that attitude . Otherwise we would still have no steam power (sail works 'pretty' well), no cars (horses work 'pretty' well) etc etc etc. Don't get me wrong I am not one of the change for change sake crowd but I also don't support the always repair crowd. The 'neat trick' is knowing when to buy new and when to get/do a repair.
So you printed it in metal ! What sort of 3D printer have you got ?
I'm betting a bit of super glue or something similar would have done the trick. A month ago I could have printed out a new cat shit scooper. I could have used inkscape to design a new poop scoop and printered it out at work for FUCK ALL cost, but I went into the local shop and got one for about a quid. I may have been able to get a cheaper one as there's a 98p shop, but I couldn't be bothered spending 15mins walking to it.
One of the problems of cheap 3D printers is the quality of plastic and the finsh
I know I have students doing such things but ntehy spend an awful lot of time doing things that can be done at a fraction of the price using other more traditional methods.
I see 3D printing a bit like making your own bread. I think ppeople shou,d think about them a bit more and understand their limitations just like buying anything else but few understand their limitations espeacilly the cheaper one.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.